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Rh So, you know, what I think happened was that when they saw that we were finding stuff that tended to discredit Mr. Browder -- so the Russians have been trying to discredit Browder forever. And they churn out fake news on Browder. They do fake movies accusing him of murder and all this other baloney. And my view is that when we started producing actual information in court that was embarrassing to him, and tended to raise questions about his activities in Russia, that they opportunistically began to try to exploit that.

And that would fit with my view of Ms. Veselnitskaya as well, which is that she viewed the success that we had in finding certain kinds of information as a ticket to political advancement in Moscow. There is only one way up in Russia, and that is do something that impresses Vladimir Putin. And so, you know, I could be wrong, but we viewed her as a very ambitious but not particularly, you know, someone with a lot of juice.

MR. SCHIFF: That sounds like a description of Carter Page.

MR. SIMPSON: But I could be wrong about all of this and I am prepared to be wrong because these people are Russians. So knowing that I don't know who everyone is when you are dealing with Russians, I avoid trying to -- I avoid situations where something could happen that I would be compromised. So I always refuse to go to Russia. And I only did this case because it was one of my oldest clients. And I still got sucked into something that, you know, I mean thank God I didn't know anything about the Trump Tower meeting or I would really have some explaining to do.

MR. SCHIFF: One way for a young -- well, I don't know about young, but one way for an ambitious lawyer to move up the ladder you said was to do something to please Vladimir Putin. Establishing a relationship with a potential UNCLASSIFIED, COMMITTEE SENSITIVE